Royal Blood by Rona Sharon

I am probably the last person to review this book. I feel like I've been reading it forever. I'm not sure why it took me so long to get through it. The writing was wonderful. Sharon's style is vivid and funny and made me want to keep turning the page while I was reading. However, until I got to the supernatural stuff I just had a hard time reading. For some reason I got it in my head that this book was historical fiction. I hadn't read any of the reviews that everyone else did because I didn't want to be tainted while I was reading the book. Something about the style and blurb in the book made me think historical fiction. Maybe the author and publisher wanted to mislead people, not sure. Maybe they wanted the other stuff to be a surprise. I'm going to ruin the surprise so if you don't want to know stop reading at the end of this paragraph! I have to say this book is WONDERFUL! If you like supernatural fantasy with a little erotica, you're in luck. This is the book for you!

If the author and publishers wanted people to be surprised by vampire storyline, it worked. However, I think they're lucky that I LOVE vampire fiction. I've read a lot of vampire fiction, the good and the bad. I was thrilled when I realized the turn the story was taking. I also like historical fiction but I haven't been in a historical fiction kind of mood lately. I promised to review this book before I stopped taking books and so felt I had to do it to keep my promise. Someone else who might, like me, be expecting straight historical fiction but does not care for vampire fiction would probably be turned off by the book. I'm not sure it's a good marketing strategy. There are many, many, many good historical fiction writers. Sharon's book could easily get lost. However, there are many authors of vampire fiction but only a few GOOD ones. Those of us that love a good vampire novel are always on the look out for a good one. Of course, I'm not in the book marketing industry so, what do I know?

The one thing that bugs me about vampire fiction is that some authors feel the need to use an excessive amount of sex. And the long descriptions of what the couple is doing to each other, page after page, is just a little on the pornographic side. I like sex as much as the next person, in case you're interested. I'm not a prude and would rather read/watch about sex than violence (one of my soap boxes - our society bans the wrong stuff. Violence is more damaging to people than sex) but I don't like to read porn. I want a good story. Making people want to stop reading and find their partner is not necessarily a good story. There wasn't a lot of it throughout the book but once it got started, it was in every chapter near the end. I'm just glad the storyline was so riveting otherwise I might have just put it away the way I did with the last few Anita Blake novels. Hamilton's books don't even count as anything other than erotica anymore. I understand the connection between vampire lore and sex. It's always been there. But there are ways to do it (and some authors are good at this) without making your readers feel like they're reading porn. On the other hand, I think some people seek out this kind of writing. So, maybe, that's who she's writing it for.

Again, I will say that this story itself was riveting. Once I got to the vampire story, I just couldn't put it down. I highly recommend this book.